Peanuts Begins by Charles Schulz for July 14, 2018

Beethoven neither bowed down to nor took off his hat for a member of the so-called aristocracy. In a now famous incident, when a friend rushed into the composer’s apartment with the news that Napoleon had crowned himself emperor, Beethoven erased Napoleon’s name from the title page of his newly completed third symphony so emphatically that it left a hole on the page, renaming it “Eroica,” or Heroic Symphony. It was as revolutionary with respect to symphonic music as the age in which it was written.